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[ Page 49 of 76 ]
From: Simon Wilcox Date: 23:57 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Windows 2003 & PHP - How I do hate thee First up - can someone explain to me why every fucking edition of Windows has to move all the configuration about ? What is the goddamn point you fuckers - unless it's to make more money for your trainers ? I mean, it's not as if your OS is a supermarket and you need to keep moving your displays around in the vain hope that people won't notice that you're peddling the same old shit as everyone else. Or maybe it is, but I digress. No, today's rant is directly squarely at Windows 2003 (and PHP but more of that pile of phlemagtic yaks bile later). Why, oh why, do I have to reboot the whole damn server just to change a path ? That's right folks, if you change the system environment path variable and you want your "services" to see the new path then you have to restart the machine. Very fucking state of the art Bill, you twat. And how did I discover this little gem ? Because php FUCKING LIES TO YOU ! If a bloke down the pub lied to me as much as php did, I'd probably thump him. Or at the very least curse at him most strongly, under my breath. Anyway, the point is this: You install php. You set up the php.ini and tell it where your extensions are installed. You uncomment one of the standard extensions. You add the registry key that tells php where to find it's it's ini file. You add the php directory to the system path (note that I've not restarted the server at this point). You start php. All is good, except that you get an error message saying "unable to load dll c:\php\extensions\php_ldap.dll - file not found". You think to yourself, "I can find you sill ymachine", coming over all Eddie Izzard for while, and eventually trying all combinations of absolute and relative paths that you can think of. Much googling later you find two very important pieces fo information: 1. You need to restart Windows for the system path to take effect. 2. PHP actually completely ignores th extensions path and looks only in the system path. But it's error message includes the path you specified. It's telling me that it can't find a file at point A but it never even fucking looked there. How fantastically lame is that ?! 4 hours this took. 4 hours when I could have been training the users and invoicing the job instead of battling with stupid operating systems and applications that have less right to live on Gods clean earth than a weasel. Thank you for your attention. I feel better now. Which is, I believe, the entire point of this list :-) S.
From: Aaron Crane Date: 17:10 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Alsaplayer So, Alsaplayer seems to be pretty much the only simple (non-jukebox) MP3 player I've tried that can spit sound out of my not-particularly-spiffy USB speakers (as opposed to the fully-working soundcard in this laptop; long story). It seems OK. It has a little GTK GUI (or it does when you install the right Debian package, sigh) that lets you skip in a track with a slider, and adjust the volume, and all that sort of thing. So. Why in the name of all that is holy does the volume slider make the sound quieter when you roll the middle mouse wheel _up_? Hate.
From: Richard Clamp
Date: 17:36 on 11 Feb 2005
Subject: "550 You're a spammer, FOAD"
Dear asshats,
I appreciate your right to put anti-spam measures in place on your
MTAs, I even expect them to show up my own misconfigurations, but
sometimes they're just plan dumb.
I mean, how is this useful:
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host smtp.ephemeral.net[66.92.69.84] said:
550
5.0.0 Spammers... the first waste up against the wall when the
revolution
comes. (in reply to MAIL FROM command)
Okay, so you think I'm spamming you (though no, I'm not, you're just
bouncing mails from a mailing list you SIGNED UP FOR) but for the love
of christ, please tell me why. I appreciate I may have something
misconfigured here, but 550 FOAD isn't helping me diagnose it and get
your mail to you now is it?
From: sabrina downard Date: 04:40 on 04 Feb 2005 Subject: Mirapoint. Mirapoint. Oh, Mirapoint. I've been cut over to you for beta testing for about an hour now (well, when I started writing this Hate, it was) and-- well. Let's just say I'm not enjoying myself. I'm sure you do well enough for most people, but I actually, you know, sort of know what I'm doing? So, clearly, I'm just fucked. I had a really good time, attempting to replicate my masses of procmail recipes into your little filters so that my inbox isn't a firey pile of burning wreckage with spam complaints and lists and hates and my actual spam and support email and everything else strewn hither and thither. Editing several dozen filters via a webmail interface -- oh, boy! Yeah, THAT was fun. The sort of fun that makes me stare longingly at the office fridge, because I *know* there are two bottles of cold, refreshing, delicious vodka in that freezer. And there's a coffee mug right next to my hand. And exactly how fucking hard is it to put in an option to filter on an arbitrary header? I don't even want to hear "oh, you can open an RFE for new features." What the fuck is that shit? I refuse to believe that after, like, four or five years or whatever of product development on a fucking mail server appliance, I am the first person who ever wanted to filter on a header that wasn't To/Cc, From, Subject, Return-Path, or the message body. I especially love how, since it's a black box instead of a proper computer -- and this may well be the only time you hear me screaming, wanting *another* computer -- i have to give up the perl scripts that I'd written to further simplify some of my mail (I LOVE being on the AOL spam complaint address for our site!). No computer, no perl, no inline editing (and possibly auto-deleting) of email! ARRRGH! The black box will make my life easier! It is, after all, as the trainer told us, the Perfect Messaging Solution! The appliance model means I never have to worry again! APPARENTLY BECAUSE I WON'T BE ABLE TO READ MY FUCKING EMAIL! I am so, so full of hate that I'm not sure I can rant any more without my head exploding. But let's not let that stop me; if my head explodes, at least I'll be free. There was a walk-in trouble call I handled -- "handled" -- yesterday afternoon, wherein our chief network engineer, also on the new system, marked a bunch of messages in his IMAP mailbox read and had Thunderbird freeze up on him for twenty minutes, and I couldn't help him one *bit* because I'm not *able* to look under the hood! Point and drool, baby. Give me a fucking banana. Maybe his client is confused; maybe either the server or the client dropped the connection; maybe the server actually is taking 20 minutes to mark 20 messages read; I'll never know! This is the brave new world that I have to look forward to! Fuck functionality; that was just embarassing. "No, I'm sorry, I actually *can't* tell my ass from a hole in the wall. Wait ten minutes, and if that doesn't work, try killing and restarting your client, maybe it'll magically work then. Ook, ook!" Yeah. I enjoyed that. A lot. Or then there was the other network engineer who approached me this morning asking if there was anything special he had to do to get his procmail recipes working on the new system. I smiled, but I think he caught on to the creeping edge of hysteria in my voice after I began describing the webmail-gui filter process, because he left pretty quickly. Upper-level management walked past me in the hall about an hour ago and asked me how I liked my new toy. I, my friends, possess more control than a thousand dominatrices spend a lifetime dreaming of. Hate. Oh, the hate. --sabrina
From: Leon Brocard Date: 14:48 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: SourceForge's download links I think SourceForge is the only site that manages to get the simple idea of letting people download files horribly wrong. If I'm in a download section, and I click on a filename, it should let me download the file. Not a very tricky concept to grasp, you might think. Fairly simple UI design. See file. Click file. Get file. But no, if I click on a file on SourceForget, I get a page saying "You are requesting file: /foobar/quux-1.2.0.tar.gz. Please select a mirror". Errr, hello? No, I just want the file. I don't care if you have mirrors, we have computers which can reasonably guess about mirrors which might work for me. So I hate it a bit, and then I click on a mirror. What does it do? Of course I don't get the file, no, I get another page telling me what I clicked on (errr, I know). And I have to wait 5 seconds for META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5; URL=http://... to do its thing. Of course, I almost never want to download to the computer my browser is running on, so I abort that, copy the link and use wget. Having to use SourceForge is hate enough, but two extra links for no reason. HATE. Leon ps I did mean it about the previous hate, but I'm slowly recovering
From: Simon Wistow Date: 12:51 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: fucking everything A broad hate this but what it coems down to is, I fucking hate it. I hate fucking edge cases, I hate libraries with cryptic errors like Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry at line 51 or error parsing start file 0000001.dpx I hate the fact that something that works perfectly on your system but inecplicably doesn't work on someone elses despite the fact that there's no obvious difference between OS, architecture or any other fucking thing apart from some random whim of a malevolent god. I hate the fact that Goats don't have fucking linking errors yet I still don't have the guts to quit, move to a mountain and go all Heidi on my life. Yes, completel with the dirndl and cunting pigtails. Because the humilation of being dressed as a 12 year old Alpine fraulein is still better constant throbbing headache that I get from grinding my teeth over a towering stack of crack fuelled insanity. All must die beneath my fiery wrath. Let karma sort them out.
From: Tannie Date: 16:27 on 26 Jan 2005 Subject: iSync must die! I hate hate hate iSync. Below you'll find my report of my latest attempt to sync all my devices. I think have succeeded mostly, but fear monday when I walk into wark and sync... So much hate comes from trying to get it all right,I just have no words for it. The report says it all. I managed to keep patient for about 1.5 hours (doing nothingmore then sync and write down my actions. Special Note: I only synced and did not change anything (unless otherwise noted). I've set up my palm to sync the contactsusing the iSync conduit and set all iSync devices to only sync contacts. To save time. (I do get things like 469 of 766 processed... Lines of information perhaps? Secretely syncing / processing ical anyway) 16:28 Started iSync through palm-sync with .Mac, Black (phone) and Tannie (palm Tungsten T) Syncing only contacts, no calender or todo items 16:31 Conflict! Contacts: add 21 | delete 15 | modify 2 -> Proceed 16:33 Done syncing, conflict resolver. 16:35 Syncing again to resolve conflicts (Black, Tannie and .Mac) 16:41 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 4 -> Proceed 16:43 Done syncing, conflict resolver. Error: Saturday, January 08, 2005 16:43 |Black| Device refused to add a contact (18) Conduit Black generated an internal error NSSyncConduitException (Device refused to add a contact (18)): can't close cleanly the connection to the device. (note: Black thinks it still thinkswhen iSync says it stopped syncing) 16:45 Syncing again to resolve conflicts (Black, Tannie and .Mac) 16:52 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 16:54 Done syncing, conflict resolver. (3 conflicts...) Error: Saturday, January 08, 2005 16:54 |Black| Device refused to add a contact (18) Conduit Black generated an internal error NSSyncConduitException (Device refused to add a contact (18)): can't close cleanly the connection to the device. (note: Black thinks it still thinkswhen iSync says it stopped syncing) Yes, again! 16:55 Syncing again to resolve conflicts (Black, Tannie and .Mac) 17:02 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 17:04 Done syncing, conflict resolver. (2 conflicts...) Again the same thing with black. At this point I decided to turn of .Mac syncing and fix the problems in my addressbook. Strated with 104 cards. Merged 1 and deleted 1. 102 cards left 17:08 Syncing again (Black, Tannie and *not* .Mac) 17:09 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 17:09 Done. error that it couldn't connect to Black (it still thought it hadn't finished the previous sync) 17:10 Syncing again (Black, Tannie and *not* .Mac) 17:14 Conflict! Contacts: add 1| delete - | Modify 3 -> Proceed 17:17 Done syncing, no conflict resolver. (again, Black doesn't like it, I suspect it has to do with a duplicate contact) Merged duplicate contact in addressbook. 17:21 Syncing again (Black, Tannie and *not* .Mac) 17:26 Done syncing, no conflicts! (but oddly enough same error on Black) Addressbook likes how I want it. 17:28 Reboot phone, syncing with just .Mac. 17:29 Done. Addressbook likes how I want it. 17:30 Syncing .Mac and Tannie 17:32 Done! 17:33 Syncing .Mac and Tannie and Black 17:36 Conflict! Contacts: Add 1 -> Proceed (I suspect it's the duplicate one again) 17:37 Done! Conflict resolver, indeed the contact I thought. Resolve it by keeping the one from Black. 17:38 Syncing .Mac and Black and *not* Tannie 17:39 Done! Conflict resolver, again the contact I thought. Resolve it by keeping the one from Black. 17:40 Syncing .Mac and Black and *not* Tannie 17:40 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 17:41 Done! error connecting to black though... 17:41 Syncing .Mac and Black and *not* Tannie 17:46 Done! error with black again (couldn't close connection properly) 17:48 Syncing .Mac and Black and *not* Tannie 17:51 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 17:54 Done! error with black again (couldn't close connection properly) 18:03 Syncing .Mac and Black and *not* Tannie 18:04 Done! error with black again (couldn't close connection properly) 18:04 Syncing .Mac and Black and Tannie 18:07 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 18:07 Done! error with black again (couldn't close connection properly) 18:08 Syncing .Mac and Black and Tannie 18:08 Conflict! Contacts: Modify 1 -> Proceed 18:08 Done! error with black again (couldn't close connection properly) repeat Repeat REPEAT! untill hate grows and phone gets smacked against the whole, iBook set on fire, palm thrown in front of train. Peace returns. Tanja
From: Richard Clamp Date: 12:54 on 26 Jan 2005 Subject: APIs that don't have good error-reporting mechanisms If there was a decent error-reporting mechanism in Email::LocalDelivery I wouldn't have just had to pepper Email::LocalDelivery::Ezmlm with Log4perl debugging statements to get this fricking mailing list working again.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 11:51 on 12 Jan 2005
Subject: lirc
This could easily be "Linux" or even "Every other operating system". But
I shall specialise - no point wasting all that good bile in one go.
So at work I'm tasked with building a set-top box. It must do full
screen DVD quality play back. I'm using Linux as the host OS on a VIA
Epia MII motherboard and a Unichrome CLE266 MPEG decoder.
I have, finally, got MPEG decoding working fast using the chip. TBH I'm
not all that fussed that it took me this long because MPEG decoding is
HARD, especially when you actually have to start worrying abotu
clockspeed of the mobo wrt to, say, PAL and NTSC. And interlacing.
Thinking that I've done the easy bit I skip merrily on to the next task
which is getting the remote control working. This, thinks I, should be
easy.
Except our chosen remote control, a Streamzap, is not support officially
by LIRC, the Linux Infra Red Control app. But there are patches.
Which don't apply cleanly. *sigh*
So I manually frig them just in time to find someone else has already
done it. And better.
The mode2 sniffer claims that there are signlas going in. The lirc
daemon however claims that it can't decode the remote control.
Try another remote control, in case this one is broken. Doesn't fix it.
Check the intaweb. Various people have had similar problems. All have
been ignored.
Mail the author of the patch. Silence.
Mail the lirc mailing list. Resounding absence of replies.
Find another patch which takes another approach - the /dev/input layer
Basically the remote control pretends to be a keyboard. Install.
And lo! If I fire up an editor and then start hitting buttons on the
remote and keys appear on the screen. Huzzah! Except that most of the
special keys, the important keys, like play. And pause. Don't produce
key codes.
However the lirc input driver should be able to cope with this.
Except it doesn't. It gets preciseley nada input. Not even the old
"Can't decode remote". Arse.
I don't know what to hate more - the parlous state of Linux drivers, the
kernel maintainers plans to change major APIs midway through a
supposedly stable branch or the weird fraction of drivers (is it a
daemon? a kernel driver? a user mode app? an X.org driver? [0], a
shared object? perhaps it can be all of the above!)[1]
Or do you know what else really fucks me off - I couldn't have done this
in anyother OS. Certainly not and keep it at a sensible price point but
very likely not have been able to do it at all. Linux may suck but it
was the best I could hope for.
And for that I really fucking hate, well, everything.
Simon
[0] Another mini rant - people who use domain names as application
names. Fucking idiots. OpenOffice.org I'm looking at you.
[1] I know why the division occurs - I understand and even agree with
principle of not having the graphics drivers &cetera; in the kernel
space. It's still a fucking arse though.
From: Luke Kanies Date: 15:03 on 21 Dec 2004 Subject: XMMS Okay, so I decided to stop using my crappy headphones at work (where I listen to them just about all day) and get a decent pair of 'phones and an external amp. Well, headroom.com has this great external amp available that's USB, which is great because I get to use their great DAC instead of whoever the hell's crappy DAC comes in my PC. I got the box last night, tried it out on my Mac, and everything worked fine. It didn't "just work", in that I had to muck with my audio settings, but it did work pretty easily, and even though I'd get annoyed at doing that very often, it was acceptable. Well, then comes the morning and I try it with my linux box, for which I bought the thing (my linux box has an especially bad sound card at the moment -- what do you want? it's built into a dual opteron box; not exactly optimized for consumer audio). Unfortunately, I'm running Gentoo, which means that everything has to be not just configured correctly, but compiled correctly, and I've already had my tribulations with that fact. Even worse, I'm using XMMS, the only mp3 player I've consistently gotten to work on linux. I probably shouldn't blame Gentoo, but it _is_ very annoying to install a complete system and not have everything "just work". Hell, even my debian box at home does that. I had to set all of my USE flags a couple different ways and then recompile a significant portion of everything to get to the point where I could both play music and get audio notifications from Gaim. The default was to only receive the notifications between songs on XMMS, which was really retarded. I partially blame XMMS for that. So, I got esound working, and after changing the settings in XMMS, Gaim, Esound, and Gnome itself, (in addition, of course, to whatever system-wide mixer settings were necessary in the first place), I finally got music in XMMS and could receive Gaim notifications while the music was playing. Of course, if the music were paused, they would queue up and I'd get them all the next time I hit play. It must be noted that I'm using one of the latest 2.6 kernels (2.6.9-r6), and ALSA, which if you've forgotten stands for 'Advanced Linux Sound Architecture'. That's right folks, it used to be worse than this. But I digress. I came here to talk about what a piece of crap XMMS is. To start with, one must despise the interface. I really don't care how good of an interface designer you think you are, the fact is that I have an interface, it already has windows, and your windows don't freaking match them at all. Yes, XMMS is skinnable, but there's no way I can just make it look like it actually belongs on my computer, which is retarded. And in addition to the interface being totally unique (and that's _always_ bad in an interface), it also basically sucks. It's got the gimp-style right-click to get a menu crap, except the clicking has to happen in certain places in the window. It's got its own weird snap to edge behaviour that's not configurable as part of the general interface. It's got a stinkload of preferences available in a menu, and then another list in a Preferences pane. Why? No idea. And then you get to using it. Well, you might, assuming everything is set up correctly. Mine is currently dying whenever I hit 'Play', because I mucked with my settings to get my amp working. Oh, they're all back to the way they were, but XMMS still dies. Why? Well, see, that's why I'm writing this email: I've no idea. It worked for a while, after I got it to the point where it and Gaim could mostly work together. Crap. Yeah, I've tried other mp3 players. Someone on IRC even told me to write my own when I bitched about XMMS. They all crash even more than XMMS does, and usually the interface is even worse. Yay. It's sad when Linux and its apps can't even get something as simple as audio right. I mean, this shit has been done for a decade. Really.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi